Marjorie Wilkins

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Time: 1: 42 pmLocation: The park across from Stop 'n Shop Grocery. Out of the hole.Temperature: 23˚ CelsiusHumidity: 41%

I will never become a plant. They have too much time to think. And I have not been blessed with the ability to turn sunlight into energy.

Time: 1:44 pmLocation: SameTemperature and Humidity: Same

I am, however, quite gifted at turning sunlight into blisters. Ow.

Time: 1:45 pmLocation: SameTemperature and Humidity: Same

I'm hungry.

Time: 1:46 pmLocation: SameTemperature and Humidity: Same

What do I have to eat? I finished the canned peaches last night, and pickled asparagus is only good with fish. And, quite frankly, I would trust fish caught out of the old industrial lake more than the ones from the grocery store.

Time: 1:47 pmLocation: SameTemperature and Humidity: Same

Dead fish shouldn't move. Ever.

Time: 1:51 pmLocation: Walking across Calloway to the Vietnamese RestaurantTemperature and Humidity: Same

As little as I trust the restaurants in this town (or really restaurants in general – who knows where they get their vegetables?), I trust the grocery store even less. Besides, I haven't eaten out in 20 years. It's time to live a little.

I forgot that I hate eating out. Everyone's so servile – it's like a regression to the Dark Ages. And nothing good came out of the Dark Ages. Except crop rotation. But they stole that, so it doesn't count.

Time: 2:01 pmLocation: SameTemperature and Humidity: Same

Oh, hell. Here comes the waiter. Now I'll have to order:

"Please, Mistress, how can I serve you?"

"Bring me Pho Tom, cur, or feel my wrath"

"Of course, Mistress. I live to serve"

And he will leave smiling, despite the fact that I have treated him little better than a slave. People are idiots.

Time: 2:03 pmLocation: SameTemperature and Humidity: Same

Blech. I feel...dirty. Which is strange – I wouldn't feel anything at all if this waiter was hit by a bus tomorrow. I'd probably say it was his own damn fault.

Time: 2:04 pmLocation: SameTemperature and Humidity: Same

That's the other thing I hate about eating out. People.

Time: 2:06 pmLocation: SameTemperature and Humidity: Same

There's a disgusting old man with an eyepatch wolfing down dumplings. His eyes keep darting around the room – just like a nervous bird picking picking at seeds while there's a hawk circling.

Time: 2:07 pmLocation: SameTemperature and Humidity: Same

Oh. No. Not like a bird. He's got chunks of dumpling oozing down into his beard.

Time: 2:13 pmLocation: SameTemperature and Humidity: Same

It's sickening. I'm actually losing my appetite.

Time: 2:16 pmLocation: SameTemperature and Humidity: Same

And the soup isn't helping. I don't know what's swimming in with the rice noodles, or even if it ever swam, but those rubbery bits certainly aren't shrimp.

Time: 2:18 pmLocation: SameTemperature and Humidity: Same

I'm going home. Pickled asparagus may be less than ideal, but at least it won't give me some horrible septic disease.

Sunday, May 8, 2011

I wonder what it's like to be a plant. I know how they grow and how they breathe. I know what they need to live. I know how to help them productive. But what really makes a plant tick? What defines a ficus's existential reality? Would a fern be a Stoic or an Epicurean?

There. That should do it. I've got water if I get thirsty, and there's lots of sun here. I should be set for a while. All I have to do is think plant.

Time: 9:41 amLocation: SameTemperature and Humidity: Same

Mmmm. Sun.

Time: 9:58 amLocation: SameTemperature and Humidity: Same

Time is meaningless - everything is just a blur of thought. And emptiness.

Time: 10:20 amLocation: SameTemperature: 24° CelsiusHumidity: 44%

I'm not sure I like this. There's too much time. I can't stop thinking of him. Why can't I stop thinking of him?

Time: 10:48 amLocation: SameTemperature and Humidity: Same

I am 57 years old. I shouldn't feel this way anymore. I shouldn't miss him like this. I should be able to move on with my life. There was a reason I left.

Time: 11:16 amLocation: SameTemperature and Humidity: Same

I can still see his eyes in our silent conversations. The almost imperceptible crinkle at the corner when he laughed, or the light in the middle when he said he loved me. The way his hair spilled over his forehead when he slept.

Time: 11:40 amLocation: SameTemperature and Humidity: Same

Damn it. I left him. I LEFT HIM.

Time: 12: 08 pmLocation: SameTemperature and Humidity: Same

Why do I still love him when I shouldn't?

Time: 12:56 pmLocation: SameTemperature and Humidity: Same

Push it out of your head Margie-girl. Stop wasting energy on useless passion – you've ruled your life by reason, and this is no time to change. Watch the people around you. Feel the sun on your skin. Dig your toes in the earth and understand what plants understand. Think about everything so you can think about nothing.

Time: 1:00 pmLocation: SameTemperature and Humidity: Same

The woman with the leaky ceiling is sitting on a bench in the playground. Her head twitches slightly, like she's counting the squeaks of the rusty swings as the wind tangles them together.

A teenage girl is staggering along the sidewalk. She is covered from head to toe in soot. The woman with the leaky ceiling has gotten up to follow her.

Two men with a hand truck have taken the ATM from Stop 'n Shop and are running down the alleyway, presumably towards a getaway car. Nectar robbers have a better strategy, and they're running off a cerebral ganglion, not a brain.

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

I keep trying to leave this carnival, but it's like some horrible physicist's black hole whose event horizon I have clearly crossed.

Time: 7:52 pmLocation: Gilbert's Carnival, near the food trailerTemperature and Humidity: Same

There are...things...moving around in the bottom of the ball pit. This is why I study plants. Plants don't move. Except slime molds. Which don't really count.

Time: 7:53 pmLocation: SameTemperature and Humidity: Same

I'm hungry.

Time: 7:54 pmLocation: SameTemperature and Humidity: Same

Do they sell anything decently edible and not laced with something at this carnival? There was a man shouting about drinking tiger's blood, and some nun ogling a clown. Perhaps I don't get out of the basement enough, but that sort of behavior seems decidedly abnormal. Young people these days...

Time: 7:55 pmLocation: SameTemperature and Humidity: Same

"Young people these days?" Damn it. I sound like my mother.

Time: 7:58 pmLocation: SameTemperature and Humidity: Same

Age aside, I'll eat wild mushrooms, but I'm not brave enough for those funnel cakes. At least I know where the mushrooms came from. And what was in them. And whether or not I'd be seeing them again.

Time: 8:00 pmLocation: Gilbert's Carnival, walking away from the food trailer, and towards one of the exits (maybe)Temperature and Humidity: Same - Wait...

What the hell is going on?

Time: 8:01Location: Gilbert's Carnival, between one of the psudo-exits and what is left of the food trailer.Temperature: It's difficult to tell. 19° behind me, and 30° in frontHumidity: 26% and dropping

The food trailer is on fire. Bits of burning napkin and flatware are blowing around in the wind - the edges burning like earthworms writhing in the sun.

Two women have fled the trailer. Quite wisely I might add. There is smoke pouring out of all sides of the trailer, and the flames seem to be spreading. Not to mention that their obvious incompetence was the start of the fire. No one who can create a funnel cake whose only redeeming factor seems to be it's obvious relationship to chunks of asphalt should be put in charge of hot grease.

Damn it! Where the hell did I put it? I know things have been disorganized lately, but I cannot function without it. It must be here.

Time: 10:38 amLocation: Same, but curled up in a ball now Temperature and Humidity: Same

Whyohwhyohwhyohwhy am I such an idiot? I've gone and put a Lactuca sativa in the teakettle. And it's been such a delicate child that a transplant now will surely kill it. What am I to do?

I need tea. All my other little darlings are running desperately short of magnesium, and they certainly could use the bacteria. Is one plant so great a sacrifice to make for the good of the whole family? Can I live with myself if I give up on this one flawed lettuce?

Time: 11:00 amLocation: Watershed Heights Basement, in the nursery, hunched over the burgeoning compost pileTemperature and Humidity: Same

Pull yourself together, Margie-girl. Sobs will just make your hands shaky, and that's not good for this little one. Prolonging the agony will just make everything worse. Just like pulling off a Band-Aid. Quickly upend the teapot, so.

Time: 11:15 amLocation: SameTemperature and Humidity: Same

There now, look what I've done. I've got dirt and snot and tears caked all down one side of my face. And I've got to be unbelievably blotchy. Why do I never have clean handkerchiefs? This is why I should have listened to my mother. She just was wrong all the time. Except about the handkerchiefs thing. And laundry. And showering on a regular basis.

Time: 11:16 amLocation: Watershed Heights basement, by the camp stove near the bedTemperature and Humidity: Same

Hot water - on. Now I have to find the worm castings. And some pantyhose. Do I have pantyhose? Do I remember the last time I wore pantyhose? I think I was 14. And graduating from 8th grade. Either way, I think I'll need to head to Stop n' Shop. I need apples, pantyhose and milk.

There's a small dog sniffing around the back of the restaurant. The little cur is probably looking for scraps, though I doubt he'll get lucky. From what I've observed, the chef is remarkably tight-fisted. Judging by his size, he eats all the scraps himself.

I absolutely must get outside. The tea is steeping and my basement now smells rather like the wrong end of an earthworm. Which, while stimulating, is not entirely pleasant.

Time: 11:40Location: CarnivalTemperature and Humidity: Same

A group of vagrants and other sundry untrustworthy looking persons have set up a carnival in the vacant lot. Besides completely trampling the thistles, they're sure to churn up the soil and drop horrible greasy foods that will completely screw over the pH. And they have clowns.

Time:8:15 amLocation: Watershed Heights basement, as near the furnace as humanly possible.Temperature: 13° Celsius. This furnace is clearly not doing what it's supposed to be doing.Humidity: 97%

That garden is not salvageable. The soil needs at least a year of solid amendment before it is even usable...it's looking like I'm going to have to put in clover to get some kind of nitrogen back, and I'll need to work in about a foot of compost before that will even consent to grow.

Curse that double-crossing airport botany bastard. There's no way I can rework my formulae in time to rescue that poor plot on the roof - I'm stuck using the pre-packaged crap from the incompetents at the hardware store. How the hell am I supposed to tailor it to the soil if I don't know what went into it, I ask you? And everyone knows the composition information on the packaging is spotty. I simply don't know how people in this town manage.

God, is that store ever open? I walk all the way over there, in the snow, mind you, and they don't have the decency to have re-worked their hours, even after the letter I sent. You know what else? I didn't even get the courtesy of a reply. Their manager will be hearing of this, if my fingers ever thaw out enough to hold a pen.

Hmmm, so the heat works up here, does it? Here I am, feeding the furnace for this whole building, and it doesn't have the decency to even heat my little corner of the basement. Ungrateful piece of machinery - I'll pull it apart for scrap, if it doesn't kill me first.

Time: 8:51 amLocation: SameTemperature and Humidity: Same

Left a note on the concierge's desk regarding the state of the furnace. I'm beginning to wonder if she even lives here; the Post-it on the grille proclaiming that she'll be back "sometime" is a permanent fixture. I don't think people even see it anymore - they interact with the desk as if it was still manned.

I saw a bearded man talking to the empty space behind the desk three days ago...though it could have been that he was just insane. I can never tell.

There's a woman rather rudely blocking my stairs. She's bright yellow and a bit jumpy - she snatched at the bouquet of eye-shaped necklaces hanging from her parka with a rubber glove as soon as she saw me. And I've frankly never seen a surgical mask used as a way of staying warm, but who am I to judge? I still think OshKosh overalls are a pretty neat idea.

Time: 9:00 amLocation: Back by the furnace. Not that it's helping much.Temperature: 14° CelsiusHumidity: 96%